Why can’t we just say what we think about basic research?
The second important flaw in the usual antithesis is that these two widespread and ancient modes of thinking about science, pure versus applied, have tended to ...
Month: January 2011
Science of science measurement
I should have linked to this earlier, but here’s the webcast and white papers from a 2-day NSF workshop on the science of science measurement. Rush Holt&#...
The fallacy of attribution
I think, on some level, when we marvel at how the world has become more egalitarian, we think about King and Lincoln. But do we think about that changes relatio...
The importance of sound bites, Ctd.
For yet another reason why Ta-Nehisi Coates is my favorite blogger, here he is echoing my call for better sound-bites: To be, all at once, accurate, concise and...
The dangers of creationism
To continue with creationism, here’s Michael Pearl: It is one thing to reject Creationism and ID; it is another thing to have good reasons for rejecting C...
Maybe the scientific method just isn’t that powerful
But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: cl...
The futility of improving democratic discourse
I’ve spent a lot of time with my head in the 19th century, and one thing that is immediately clear is that real argument has not replaced vicious name-cal...
One year of blogging!
So apparently WordPress.com thinks I did okay in my first year of blogging. Frankly, I’m quite proud of what I accomplished and hope to do more this year...